Super Sentai: Gosei Sentai Dairanger—The Complete Series

This 1992 Toei TV fantasy series featuring cool-for-its-day f/x and extensive fight scenes was the basis for U.S. producers Haim Saban and Shuki Levy's English-rewritten and reshot Power Rangers superhero franchise. The original is truly bizarro, with a group of color-coded “Ch'i Power” rangers—identified loosely with star systems—morphing into giant robots to fight the evil Gorma, who are a bunch of bad guys now bedeviling society after lying dormant for 6,000 years. Freaky villains include the in-line skating “Key Jester,” plus “Funeral Figurine Ventriloquist,” “Purse Monk,” “Magnet Priest” (the clergy of several cultures seem to be models for monsters), and “Copy Empress,” who is, of course, a walking female copy machine. Obscure Japanese cultural references abound, such as lengthy parodies (or not) of “drunken” martial-arts fighting styles—here against an alcohol-dispensing, humanoid-ish square of tofu. Some of the imagery might be troubling for younger viewers—including scenes of child abuse/neglect, and the death of a Gorma boy villain who is killed and then retrieved from hell via a fishing reel—but this should still appeal to fans of Power Ranger and/or Japanese TV. Recommended. Aud: P. (C. Cassady)